Unlike a traditional UICC Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card used in a consumer device, e.g. a mobile phone, all eUICC that are deployed in e.g. Machine-to-Machine (M2M) solutions and embedded into the M2M device cannot easily be accessed by human intervention to switch the SIM card manually during the device life cycle. According to the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Association (GSMA) eUICC standard (GSMA “Remote Provisioning Architecture for Embedded UICC” DRAFT 1.39 29th April 2013) and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) eUICC Standard (EXALTED “Expanding LTE for Devices” FP7 Contract Number: 258512, Feb. 29, 2012), all eUICC shall be delivered with a pre-installed provisioning subscription for remote provisioning/bootstrapping purpose (i.e. a provisioning/bootstrapping operator provides initial bootstrapping connectivity for eUICC in order to enable late binding feature i.e. to remotely provision the 1st eUICC operational subscription to the eUICC when the device (e.g. a car) comprising the eUICC is shipped from initial manufacturer country to the destination country (1st operational subscription could be provided by the local operator from the destination country), and then later to change the eUICC active operational subscription from the current operator subscription to an new operator (due to the location being changed to another country, or changed operator subscription) during the device/eUICC long life cycle (15-20 years), in order to avoid high roaming fee and/or single operator lock-in situation during the device long life cycle e.g. in the automotive industry or for smart metering/security cameras etc.
However, eUICC connectivity may be lost permanently during subscription management lifecycle through operations such as enable/disable/activate/pause/deactivate/terminate/etc. In such cases the eUICC and network must fall back to an available subscription to recover the initial connectivity.
Chapter 3.5.12 “Fall-Back Mechanism” of GSMA “Remote Provisioning Architecture for Embedded UICC” DRAFT 1.39 29th April 2013 states that in the event of loss of network connectivity, as detected by the device, there is a need to change to the profile with fall-back attribute set. In this case the eUICC disables the currently enabled Profile (Profile A) and enables the Profile with Fall-back Attribute set (Profile B). The device reports network loss to the eUICC. The eUICC is configured to perform the fall-back mechanism if certain network connectivity issues are reported by the Device.